Harvard University President Alan Garber issued an apology and promised reforms after campus reports concluded there had been critical lapses in combating prejudice at the Ivy League institution, particularly against Jewish students. 

The university on Tuesday released the results of two presidential task forces focused on how Jewish or pro-Israel students and their pro-Palestinian peers have been treated since Oct. 7, 2023. In the 18 months since Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel, pro-Palestinian protests have rocked the school, as demonstrators argued Israel’s military response constituted genocide in Gaza and that the Jewish state has no right to exist.

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JEWISH STUDENTS FEEL ‘UNSAFE’ ON CAMPUS WITH ANTI-ISRAEL SENTIMENT ON THE RISE

The university’s response to the protests sparked criticism that officials failed to sufficiently safeguard Jewish students from widespread antisemitic harassment, leading Garber to announce the two panels investigating allegations last year.

The report on antisemitism at Harvard was particularly damning, with the task force finding that many Jewish students had become social pariahs due to their ethnicity, pro-Israel viewpoints had been widely censored, and Jewish or pro-Israel voices on faculty had been suppressed.

In response to the reports, Garber wrote, “The 2023-24 academic year was disappointing and painful.”

“I am sorry for the moments when we failed to meet the high expectations we rightfully set for our community,” he continued, with his words coming as Harvard duels with the Trump administration over how to combat antisemitism. 

The antisemitism report

The “best way to describe” the existence of many Jewish and Israeli students on campus was that their very presence was often considered offensive and “triggering” on campus, the report found. 

Jewish students were singled out or “shun[ned]” in a unique manner, the presidential task force added, with the authors writing that they were “not aware of any other group on campus that is subject to social exclusion as part of an intentional campaign by political organizers.” 

“Many Jewish Harvard affiliates were routinely asked to clarify that they were ‘one of the good ones’ by denouncing the State of Israel and renouncing any attachment to it,” the report read. “An Israeli Arab student told us: ‘You get used to social discrimination from [the] first day at Harvard by people of Arab descent. People refusing to speak to you. Not even pretending to be nice. Some people pretend to be nice and end conversation in [a] polite manner when they find out [I am] Israeli and then don’t talk to [me] again.’”

The environment has pushed Jews and those “with a wide range of opinions on Israel” out of the Harvard community and opportunities at the Ivy League institution, the task force found.

“Some non-Jewish faculty told us that Jewish candidates turned down post-doctoral fellowships at Harvard. We also heard from Jewish medical school students that they shied away from residencies at Harvard’s hospitals because of the deep politicization of the climate,” the report read, adding that in another case, “a Jewish student took a leave of absence after the chants from the protests shattered their sense of safety … [while] others with a wide range of opinions on Israel reported they largely withdrew from campus life.” 

The anti-Israel bias extended to faculty as well, who “expressed fear that their colleagues would not vote to appoint a Zionist or an Israeli to a faculty position in their departments.”

Recommendations made in the antisemitism report

In March and April of 2024, the task force began hosting a series of nearly 50 listening sessions with around 500 Harvard students, staff, and faculty.

The task force made several recommendations to address the problems defined in the antisemitism report, including reforming the university’s admissions process to ensure candidates are rejected “who have track records of antisemitism, bias against Israelis based on their national origin, or other forms of identity-based discrimination, including anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, or anti-Palestinian bias.” 

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Additional recommendations call for adding an antisemitism expert to Harvard’s faculty; explicitly acknowledging and addressing “that many Israeli and pro-Israeli students at Harvard have experienced shunning, alienation, social isolation, and discrimination,” and “unequivocally” stating that such behavior is “unacceptable and fails to meet the expectations for the behavior of Harvard community members;” creating an Office of Religious, Ethical, and Spiritual Life; establishing clear guidelines to ensure that Harvard departments or personnel are not promoting “ideological campaigns” that alienate certain students; and enlisting Jewish and Muslim faculty and students to help design “anti-bias” materials that can be incorporated into student orientation programs.

Another recommendation surrounds reforms to academic life that would expand the teaching of Jewish history and culture. One proposal would be to create a Harvard Center of Pluralism to support many viewpoints on Israel’s history and reiterate policies prohibiting faculty from pushing anti-Israel perspectives outside the classroom. 

“For instance, we think it should be unacceptable for instructors to cancel class to facilitate student attendance at a protest or hold office hours onsite at a political event (as we understand some instructors did at the 2024 pro-Palestinian encampment),” the report read. 

The task force also surveyed Jewish students on what changes should be implemented to make their experience on campus more positive.

Among their recommendations were implementing a clear definition of what constitutes antisemitism and enforcing violations, overhauling the university’s diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, and bolstering “institutional neutrality as a guiding principle.”

Many students voiced concern about the lack of clarity on what amounts to antisemitism and a lack of understanding in the Harvard community of how antisemitism connects to anti-Zionism.

For instance, many Jewish students at Harvard argued that “denying spiritual and historical connections between Jews and historic Palestine, presenting Israel entirely within a framework of rapacious settler-colonialism, and refusing to consider Jews to be members of a historically vulnerable minority group” constitutes antisemitism. 

But such behavior, which was described in the task force’s review as “an identity-based bias” that has kept Jewish students from fully participating in Harvard’s educational, co-curricular, and social life,” was tolerated at the university, holding “support from among segments of Harvard’s faculty, staff, and students,” the report found. It was also observed during pro-Palestinian protests at Harvard, where the task force wrote that “at times the anti-Zionism enunciated in the student protests crossed a line from a call for freedom and security for Palestinians and Jews alike to a stereotyped notion: that Israel is not a state, but rather a ‘settler colony’ of white Europeans who have no real connection with the land they had stolen, that epitomized aggression, and was bereft of virtues.” 

The concerns come after Claudine Gay stepped down as president of Harvard in January 2024, in part due to backlash she received when she declined to say during a congressional hearing that calling for the genocide of Jews violated Harvard’s rules on bullying and harassment.

Another recommendation proposed by the campus’s Jewish population surrounded the university’s DEI initiatives, which they complain had failed to “satisfactorily engage with Jews as a minority group.”

“Some would like DEI offices [to] improve their engagement with Jewish community members. Others would like to see DEI programs wound down,” the survey found. 

Their requests come as the task force found some Jewish students are choosing to hide their identities on campus, rather than experience isolation and hate. 

“The more time we spent on this problem, the more we learned about how demonization of Israel has impacted a much wider swath of campus life than we would have imagined,” the report read. 

The report on the pro-Palestinian student experience

The university conducted a twin, though less extensive, study on the experience of pro-Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students on campus. 

Those students reported feeling censored for their viewpoints and increasingly abandoned by Harvard leadership in recent months, citing incidents such as the university’s move to initially withhold diplomas from 13 graduating seniors last year who were part of a pro-Palestine encampment. 

‘NO PEACE’ ON CAMPUS THIS SEMESTER

Surveyed Muslim students reported feeling particular discomfort with expressing their opinions. While 67% of Jewish students who participated in the survey reported feeling discomfort, 80% of their Muslim peers experienced those emotions, according to the reports on antisemitism and anti-Muslim bias. Muslim respondents also reported the most negative outcomes when asked if they felt physically unsafe on campus, with 47% indicating they felt fear, compared to 15% of Jewish respondents. 

The report addressed incidents that contributed to heightened fear, including a knife attack on a Muslim woman wearing a hijab reported in a listening session, “alcohol poured over a Palestinian student, and community members being followed and yelled at on the streets, heightening concerns over Islamophobic violence on campus.”

One of the key areas that students expressed the most anger about was Harvard’s stance on divesting from organizations or people linked to Israel. 

“Students expressed frustration with what they felt were dismissive attitudes from leaders, who argued that divestment from Israel lacked moral clarity,” the report read. “Many students linked divestment to their safety and sense of belonging on campus. Drawing parallels to Harvard’s past divestment from companies during apartheid South Africa and fossil fuels, students argued for consistency and serious engagement in current ethical issues, feeling their concerns were not sufficiently acknowledged.” 

In response, the task force’s recommendations included expanding mental health services for students, convening a committee of faculty and specialists on Palestinians and Islamophobia, and defining instances of Islamophobia and anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias. The task force also called for a new visiting professorship in Palestinian studies and the establishment of two to three additional faculty positions, including a chairperson in Palestinian history, over the next five years.

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Garber is working alongside Harvard deans and other institutional leaders to review and implement the recommendations made in both reports.

“The scope of recommendations made by the task forces underscores the breadth of the challenges we face,” the Harvard president wrote Tuesday. “They must be addressed with determination at every level of the University … If we intend to make significant and durable change across Harvard, it is critical that we act decisively in each of these areas.”